The Reclamation of Eve Chapter 5 of 6 + Science IRL: Roads Between Universes
Eve seeks closure about slaver Adam and a new world for her baby cyborg clone. In this week’s Science IRL: Wormholes, Eleven Dimensions, and Quantum Entanglement
Jump to Table of Contents for Earlier Chapters
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Chapter 5
Previously…Eve was whisked away from her crashing airship to another universe by Lucifer.
Lucifer strolled across the cobbled sidewalk by the river to dispose of the paper cup in a metal trash bin. Eve was licking ice cream from her fingers.
"Alright, so how was meeting your fifteenth version of Adam? Had enough?" Lucifer asked. "You know you have to decide on a world soon. c-AI-n is almost ready to come out and meet you. She'll need a home, a real bed, a routine. Same as you."
"Please. Just a few more worlds, then I'll choose. We haven't found enough cyborg tech for C-AI-n to be with her own kind."
"She has you. She has me."
"You just don't understand," she said quietly.
Lucifer frowned but didn't reopen their months-long argument. "So, how was Adam in this world?"
Eve sighed and lowered herself in the grass by the river, settling c-AI-n's rucksack beside her. Eve couldn't find the words, and she knew Lucifer would be patient.
"He didn't recognize me, same as all the rest." Eve stared into the still water at her reflection. Her roughly chopped short hair that she'd shorn to save her life. Square jaw, bronze skin, dark, wide eyes. "Actually, if I'm the perfect clone of the first Eve, then no art you've shown me in any world has ever gotten us right," she said, stalling. She touched her cheek and wondered at how it was possible to be a story so many knew by heart but that no one could recognize.
At first, Eve had spied on Adam discreetly, as she promised Lucifer, but once it was clear she was a stranger to most of his incarnations, she'd manufactured reasons to engage him.
In every world, Adam was a prolific genius. Energetic, focused, inventive.
And blank, somehow.
Today at a cafe, Eve had sat at a table across from Adam and a woman that Eve knew instinctively loved him. The woman had stood abruptly in tears, knocking her carved wooden chair over. "Can you actually feel anything?"
Adam had stared at his empty plate, even when the woman threw a ring at him and stormed off.
Eve had wanted to applaud the woman for solving the puzzle Eve never had. That was why he'd never wanted to know Eve. He didn't care. Or not at least, not like Lucifer cared. Not like she cared for c-AI-n.
"I don't think there's anything more I need to know about Adam," Eve said heavily. "The worst case scenario of why he did what he did to me seems to be the truth. He isn't capable of knowing or caring how it affected me. I don't want to spend any more of my new freedom trying to fix that hurt."
Lucifer lowered himself in the grass. Put a hand on her shoulder.
"Sounds like that should be a huge relief. What's wrong?"
"I can't parse how what I did to c-AI-n is any different than what Adam did to me. I made her in that place where I knew nothing. Not who or what I am, not what any other world could be like. Now she may be alone without people like her for her whole life. How am I any better for c-AI-n than Adam was for me?"
Lucifer chuckled. "For starters, you're asking this question. Plus, you're a beautiful, phenomenal scion of a sentience, Eve. That's why that creep cloned you in the first place and put you in a blank canvas of a world. There's nobody out there more grade-A. You--your legacy--is more than anyone could ask of a being. But you don't have to live up to it, under it, or around it. You be whatever you want, and help c-AI-n become whoever she's gonna be. I think the first Eve would want that for you."
"But I'm not like the other Eves."
Eve pressed a fingertip to the tear that slipped over her cheek and drew a heart with it on the Lucifer's shiny shoe.
"How well I know," Lucifer laughed.
"They're..." she struggled for the right word. A word that was big enough.
"You know I love to hear your thoughts. Take your time," Lucifer said kindly, if helplessly impatient.
"They're...Wildly alive. Colorful. You look at each one, and though they're different, they're all so...Eve. Elemental creators. Do you remember the one that paints naked alone all day on that secluded beach next to her cottage--the same painting every day while bread bakes?"
"Just to feel each brushstroke like it was new," Lucifer quoted her.
Lucifer smoothed a lock of her hair behind this misty-eyed Eve's ear.
"I feel so off-nominal," Eve said, then laughed ruefully. "I'm an out-of-family data set in one of the most fundamental theorems of the human existence."
Lucifer laughed softly and kissed her forehead.
"What would you do if you were me?" She asked finally.
"Ah, love. That's the whole thing of it. I'm not you. They're not you. I can't tell you what to do, and they couldn't either--you knew enough not to ask those other Eves to tell you. But I wonder if you realize just how much growing up in total isolation in a barren world has set you up differently from your other incarnations."
Eve narrowed her eyes at him. "Tell me a story, Lucifer. I don't understand."
Stay tuned for the finale where Eve decides how to raise c-AI-n next week…
Science In Real Life
The Road to Other Universes: Wormholes, Eleven Dimensions, and Quantum Entanglement Teleportation
In last week’s Science IRL newsletter, we talked about solving the first problem you’d tackle if you were trying to build a parallel universe Worldship: how to get enormous amounts of energy by turning space itself into propellant.
So we have the principles of how we’d supply energy to our Worldship engine, and the way Lucifer powered up to travel.
Now we tackle the second problem: what path do we take?
Option 1: Wormhole Theoretical tunnel creating a shortcut between vast distances in spacetime predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity
Wormhole bridge between universes. Photo credit Space.com
If we could find a wormhole, it would have a few issues that would make traveling through it difficult.
You would need to somehow enlarge the wormhole, or wait a few eras for the expansion of the universe to take care of that to be of any use transmitting a ship
You would need to stabilize the wormhole with exotic material—negative pressure, high negative energy density space gunk which conveniently is theoretically available
You’d need some phenomenal radiation shielding to protect anything alive passing through the wormhole
Option 2: Eleven Dimensions in the Multiverse String Theory supports a concept that there are many universe bubbles throughout the multiverse.
7 dimensional cube. Photo Credit Wikipedia
Theoretically, universes could have up to eleven dimensions. As humans, we do not have the physical sensors or even scientific sensors (yet) to perceive other dimensions beyond the four that are familiar to us (length, width, height and time). Each universe dimensional level would have unique phenomena, getting more and more wild as the dimensions increase. It does appear that universes above seven dimensions would be inhospitable to our human meat suits. Depending on which universes and how many dimensions they have are overlapping with our own, multiverse travel may be as simple as opening a door—if only we could sense it.
Option 3 Quantum Entanglement Teleportation: We may be close to proving the fundamental underpinnings that could one day enable teleportation.
Einstein and a rival scientist named Niels Bohr argued fiercely about a concept called quantum entanglement wherein two particles can become inextricably bonded and will influence each other without wires of transmitters. Einstein dismissively called the bond “spooky action at a distance”. The bond was a theoretical prediction Bohr found within the equations governing quantum mechanics that two predicted that particles could be entangled and would remain so regardless of how far one particle is from the other—whatever happens to one entangled particle will always impact the other.
In their heyday, the rivals were unable to prove the theory one way or the other.
Left, Bohr with his entangled particles. Right, Einstein with his determined glove particles. Photo Credit PBS
Bohr argued that the act of measuring impacts the particles, forcing both become momentarily determined within their probability cloud. Einstein argued that, like a left and right hand glove, the particles were always determined and there was no spooky action or active connection. Because Bohr’s concept quintessentially couldn’t be measured without affecting the outcome, this remained a theory.
Until recently.
In 2020 scientists at Fermilabs were able to copy one qubit (a quanta of a proton which is an atom of light) from one island and print it over on a neighboring island using two entangled particles connecting the locations across their physical distance.
Fermilabs is calling this capability “A viable quantum internet — a network in which information stored in qubits is shared over long distances through entanglement” (Leah, 2020)
What’s that mean for us Sci-Fi fans? Its qubits today and eventually more and more information can be stored until all the information needed to define every cell in your body could be held in the quantum internet and transmitted over long distances.
Star-Trek style teleportation, y’all. Where you get beamed up in a column of light and you emerge in a column of light somewhere else. Downside, maybe? Your original version gets disintegrated in the process.
If you don’t feel anything, and your copy doesn’t sense a blip—is this a moral conundrum? Does this amount to killing your original? Would you do it to get to Japan from NYC in 3 seconds? Heck of an improvement from Starship’s 30 minute point to point travel promise, eh?
Next week in our finale chapter, we will choose which of these three navigation methods is best for the Worldship and which is best for Lucifer.
References
Leah. (2020, December 15). Fermilab and partners achieve sustained, high-fidelity quantum teleportation. News. https://news.fnal.gov/2020/12/fermilab-and-partners-achieve-sustained-high-fidelity-quantum-teleportation/
Author’s Note: New Project Sneak Peek!
Hey my nerds! Last week I promised I’d give you a little teaser from my new project. I did not expect to be continuing in the vein of this Eve story, but my next novel’s main character bulldozed herself into a new short story I was outlining two weeks ago. New MC caught me unawares with her bombastic mojo and I’ve been totally obsessed with building out her world since.
Without further ado…
Everyone else in my class is lining up waiting for their first ride on the CopyChat hoverbus, awkwardly shrugging their backpacks from shoulder to shoulder. My own pack is stuffed with now-useless deadweight I brought to share for my first meeting with me from another universe—my favorite snacks, the tracks I’ve been mixing, the quark puzzle I made last year for my freshman thesis. Being left behind wouldn’t suck so much if Devi wasn’t avoiding my eye.
As if I’d ask her to stay behind just because I can’t go. She needs all the advice from her doppel-Devi she can get. At least one of Planck High’s cyborgs will get some tips on surviving high school today.
“We’ll talk about this at home tonight. I’m sorry, nova-chip.” Dad’s text scrolls across my left eye.
“Please!? You don’t understand how badly I need advice from someone who actually gets it!”
Fuck. I’ve accidentally sent that. I want to rip my aug out. I mute my outgoing feed. Then my feed altogether. It’s so easy for me to think-hate and text. One of the things it’d be nice to get some tips about being me from another me.
Dad could just sign the permission slip right now and I could line up arm in arm with Devi. Why do we have to be a face to face to talk about this? I’ll have to play nice to keep my bargaining chips so I can figure out what’s really going on.
Meantime, I need another target to vent.
“May I go spend the rest of the afternoon in the lab, Mm. Swanson?”
She turns to me and her expression sours. I can practically hear the personal assistant in her glasses telling her to take a deep breath. This wackbag makes hating me look like a full time job.
What do you think so far? Ten points to readers who recognize my the main character!
Much love, and see you next time, my nerds!
Table of Contents for Reclamation of Eve
Chapter 2 + Science IRL: How To build a Worldship
Chapter 3 + Science IRL: Our Closest Neighbor Universe
Chapter 4 + Science IRL: How to Power a Worldship